PowerShell a constant in a changing world
- by Rob Addis
I've been programming for about 20 years now some of my friends have been at it for over 30. I have read many, many manuals and yes it's not my favourite past time. So 10 years ago I made a promise to myself to try and only learn about products which have long life times. I immediately gave up programming GUIs and concentrated on back end development as I decided that these products (Oracle, MQ Series, SQL Server, BizTalk and later WCF, WF) have longer life times and smaller incremental changes than front end products.10 years ago I had no idea how good a decision that would turn out to be. There have been so many different Microsoft products for the front end in that time; multiple versions of Windows Forms, FrontPage, Html, Javascript, ASP.net, Silverlight, SharePoint, WPF and now hopefully a stayer Metro.I remember being at a Microsoft conference in 2006 when Martin Fowler told a crowd of developers (I'm paraphrasing) "If you don't like change then you're in the wrong business!". Well I've been in the business for 20 years and yes I'm a little resistant to change. I like my investment in reading manuals and getting certified to be time well spent!Over the last 2 years I have been writing A LOT of PowerShell script, I think there is a good chance this product will still be around and be used for new development in 10 years, learning it is a good investment.
